WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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Seattle City Light uses three technologies
in its meter reading work and in its effort

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to curtail electricity theft.

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There are all kinds of situations where our
meter readers might not be able to reach a

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meter: somebody kept a gate locked, or there's
a dog in the yard.

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If they find themselves in a situation where
they can still see the meter, even if they

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can't get all the way up to it, they'll pull
out a pair of binoculars and they'll read

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the meter using the binoculars.

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They don't have to estimate what your usage
was and you get an accurate bill at the end.

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On the current diversion side, there are two
technologies that our employees use to try

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and detect electricity theft.

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The first of these is called the SensorLink
Ampstik and this is a device that determines

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whether there's electricity flowing down a
service line between a transformer and a premises.

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In those instances where we find that there
is electricity flowing to the house, but it's

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not being measured, we have some investigation
to do to determine whether there's a problem

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with the meter or whether someone has done
something to bypass that meter.

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We can install, if necessary, what's called
the SensorLink transformer meter, and this

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is, essentially, just another electricity
meter, but it's installed up at the transformer,

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so, if we have a situation where somebody
has set up a bypass to their electricity meter,

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we can tell how much electricity they've been
using that hasn't been getting measured at

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their meter.

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It's been estimated that there's been about
3 million dollars in lost revenue from people

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who have bypassed meters or in some other
way taken advantage of electricity that they're

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not paying for.

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These are efforts that we are doing to make
sure that, if someone's using electricity,

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they're paying for it, because that helps
keep prices down for everyone.

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For more information or to leave a comment:
www.seattle.gov/privacy